Pretty in Pink
by ariescelestial
Summary: Sam wearing pink? Tucker giving up meat? Both seem like signs of the world's end...but for these friends, their world has already ended. [oneshot]


**Pretty in Pink

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I'm in a daze waiting for class to start--the sooner it starts, the sooner the misery ends--when this totally cute chick walks in. Maybe she's new, because I don't recognize her. She's scanning the classroom, one finger tugging at her short blonde hair, and I fire up my PDA so I can find her name and start the sweet-talking.

Only a split second after pressing the power button, I realize who she is. Really, we've been best friends for how long? I just can't get used to this new appearance.

"You did it again," she says, now standing by my desk. Ugh. I was hoping she wouldn't notice. I look up to see the ghost of a smirk on her face, but her eyes are dull and tired, ruining any show of confidence.

Most people wear black for mourning, but Sam wears a pink shirt and blue jeans. To everyone else it looks like she's gotten over Danny, and I know her parents are thrilled at the change--just last night they gushed over her with how proud they were of her little "reform".

Sam had given them a wan smile. I had wondered if it was worth sacrificing my baby to end their obliviousness with a PDA chucked at one of their thick skulls, but before I could decide Sam had dragged me away. She doesn't argue with them anymore. Jazz talked my ear off once with a bunch of psycho-babble about how Sam is so desperate for love that she's willing to give up her identity to have her parents' approval. I don't know much about psychology, though it really does seem like Jazz is right. What I know for certain is that I've already lost one of my best friends, and I think I'm going to lose the other soon too.

Jazz and I both tried to tell Sam it wasn't her fault Danny died. She's a normal human and the ghost ambushed her--what could she have done? It was Danny's choice to come and save her. But she's convinced that Danny blames her, because since the death of his human half, Phantom's never been seen around Amity. For a while we thought it meant that Danny's spirit had moved on. But then, the rumors of his return started. Skulker stopped an attack on the school because he received news that Phantom had been sighted in the Ghost Zone. A ghost wearing a black and white jumpsuit was on the evening news after he stopped an armed robbery, but the only footage of him was poor. The worst one was when a fifteen-year-old with messy black hair and blue eyes was said to have saved a toddler during a ghost attack. Some of the gossip has been proven false, like the ghost who stopped the robbery. The ghost wasn't even a he--it was the female clone Vlad had made. Apparently she was following in Danny's footsteps by protecting people. But only some of them; most of the rumors still circulate, with no conclusive evidence to say whether they're true or false. For my part, I believe they're wrong. At least, I certainly hope they are. If Danny's still out there, ghost or human, I'm gonna have to introduce the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick to his head. Because Sam believes them, and she thinks the reason Danny hasn't appeared to her is because he hates her for getting him killed.

Guilt made Sam withdrawn. She hasn't seen any of the Fenton family since Danny's funeral, and she tried backing away from me too. I did everything to prevent that--and I do mean **everything**. I even became an ultra-recyclo-vegetarian for a month. Yeah, Tucker Foley gave up meat. My entire family thought I was terminally ill, but it forced Sam to at least stick around and give me nutrition tips so I wouldn't faint. By the fourth week Sam told me I was being ridiculous and that since there were some foods I wouldn't touch at all, I needed to eat meat or I'd end up in the hospital. The dreaded "h" word got me back to my carnivorous ways pretty quick, but I first made Sam promise she wouldn't be a stranger. She agreed, muttering something about how if I got anymore desperate, I'd end up killing myself and then I'd become the Lunch Lady's sidekick.

I just can't leave her alone. Sometimes there are flashes of the old Sam, but most of the time she seems burned-out. Though she still has her environmental beliefs, she doesn't do protests and she gave up her goth clothing because she didn't want to argue with her parents. Even right now, as Mr. Lancer talks about seventeenth-century poets, she's completely shut down with a blank expression and eyes that don't seem to see anything. No one can reach her, not even me.

Yeah, Sam's pretty in pink. But it's the same kind of beauty you see in dead flowers.

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**Author's Note:** This is my first DP fic. It started from a mental image of Sam saying that pink was for mourning, since she hated it so much...but instead of turning out humorous, as the original scene was in my mind, it turned out like this. 


End file.
